Philadelphians stand to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but many may be unaware of how it can help them affordably make their homes more energy efficient.
A 2023 survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that more than three-fourths (77%) of Americans were largely unaware of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), let alone its benefits like rebates and tax credits for electric vehicles and home energy efficiency upgrades. This lack of awareness signals an urgent need for effective IRA communication.
Encouragingly, a 2023 survey by Yale and George Mason University (GMU) found that—after learning briefly about the IRA—more than two-thirds (71%) of registered voters said they supported it. But, despite this support, less than one-third (30%) believed the IRA would help them personally.
The IRA’s Justice40 Initiative is meant to ensure that 40 percent of the resources made available through the IRA benefit disadvantaged communities. But, a deeper analysis of a related 2022 survey by Yale and GMU showed that minority and low-income registered voters had heard of the IRA less than others. These groups also had the greatest support for the IRA after learning about it.
Together, these findings provide important insights:
IRA information may not be reaching the people it is most intended to help.
When people learn about the IRA, they largely support it.
Limited IRA awareness may make it difficult for people to understand if and how it may help them and their ability to act on its benefits.
Effective communication, therefore, is necessary to increase people’s awareness of the IRA, their support for it, and their understanding of its benefits. And, such communication is especially important in areas with large economic and energy disparities—like Philadelphia—as the communities experiencing these types of challenges are precisely who the IRA is designed to help.
Because of this, practitioners and policymakers aiming to communicate about the IRA in ways that people are receptive to should elevate the voices of messengers the public finds credible. Importantly, who the public finds credible may vary from community to community, so conducting region-specific research can further assist in tailoring communication strategies for a given demographic area.
Government agencies, utility companies, or nonprofit organizations may be well positioned to communicate about the IRA to the U.S. public (and some are already doing so), but each should be evaluated individually to determine if their messages resonate with Philadelphians.
For example, cleanenergy.gov is a White House website that provides information about IRA benefits to the public. Given that Philadelphia is a largely liberal city, the Biden White House may be viewed as a credible source on the IRA for this audience, as the legislation was a product of this administration. However, the inherent political polarization surrounding the White House as a messenger may not resonate with conservatives who live in the city.
Therefore, elevating IRA communication from non-partisan messengers may be beneficial. But, while utility companies or nonprofits may circumvent issues related to politics, nonprofits may struggle with name recognition or brand familiarity, and utility companies (like Philadelphia’s sole energy provider PECO) may be viewed as less credible if customers have had past negative service or billing experiences.
Each of these potential IRA communicators may face its own challenges in connecting with a Philadelphia audience—our forthcoming research will explore nuanced perceptions of these sources and identify which sources the city’s residents find most credible. Doing so may help inform communication meant to raise Philadelphians’ awareness of the IRA and connect them to its benefits, ultimately advancing the goals of the IRA.
Dr. Romm has put together four COP28 primers, 1- or 2-pages long, because tragically, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN-led global effort to avoid catastrophic climate change (Nov 30 to Dec 12) is built around two dangerous myths. These two myths are the notions of “net zero” and cheap carbon offsets—the subjects of two primers. Net zero itself is built around two supposedly major climate solutions that would, in fact, make things worse if we actually tried to scale them up in the next two to three decades. So, a third primer is on bioenergy plants with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), where growing biomass removes CO2 from the air, and a BECCS system buries it. The fourth is on direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), which pulls CO2 directly out of the air and buries it.
Humans generate 50 billion tons (Gt) of CO2-equivalent gases each year, and scientists tell us we must zero out those emissions by mid-century to avoid the worst climate impacts. Net zero is the hope that we could cut emissions by perhaps only 40 Gt/yr or less—and remove from the air 10 Gt/yr or more by 2050 with the three most prominent strategies by far: BECCS, DACCS, and tree planting. But science shows these 3 strategies don’t scale and 2 make things worse. New modeling finds scaling up bioenergy and BECCS increases CO2 emissions and warming for decades, with net cooling not occurring until 2100 or beyond. Scaling up BECCS is not carbon removal, but more like deforestation.
DACCS is a costly and inefficient way to use vast amounts of renewable energy to achieve CO2 reductions. That carbon-free power could have directly replaced the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel plants, cars, and gas heating far more cheaply. Scaling upDACCS will be a costly misallocation of renewables for decades—until fossil fuel emissions are cut perhaps 90%. We should be investing mainly in RD&D of promising carbon removal strategies to see if any might be usefully scalable by 2050. As for trees, even planting one trillion would at best remove just 6% of the CO2 needed by 2050. And that would require a wildly unrealistic area the size of the lower 48 states.
CO2 offsets—where companies/countries meet CO2 pledges by paying a developing country to cut emissions in their place—were artificially cheap (<$5 a ton) since the large majority were not real. So, it seemed like there was a bonanza of cheap offsets richer countries could buy from poorer ones to avoid the cost and effort of cutting their own emissions. But there wasn’t. Genuine offsets that were not double counted (claimed by both buyer and seller) were always going to be much pricier.
This 2-page primer explains the poorly understood but vast implications of the world’s decision at Glasgow (COP26) in 2021 to create “authorized” offsets that solve the double counting problem with a “corresponding adjustment” (CA) that ensures the seller can’t also claim the offsets it sells. First, if the voluntary carbon market doesn’t embrace the CA, “there is a risk [it] undermines the objectives of the Paris Agreement.” Second, the CA makes it much harder forthe sellertoachieve its Paris pledge—so it’s a bad deal for them. Third, that’s why, in 2023, a World Bank analysis found authorized offsets may cost over $100 a ton. Fourth, offsets make little sense when everybody has to go to zero. Selling off your easiest reductions cheaply to another country is self-defeating.
Historically, journalists have struggled to report on climate change. If they reported on it at all, they incorrectly presented it as a debate, with the majority of the scientific community on one side and the fossil fuel industry on the other. Unfortunately, their aim of balance ironically led to biased reporting on the issue and ultimately a misinformed public, not to mention idle policymakers.
But Inside Climate News (ICN) was different, said Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Penn Center for Science Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM), at a panel discussion on September 18. The panel was composed of editors and reporters from ICN, which is a Pulitzer prize-winning, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that has been reporting on climate change since 2007.
“ICN never adopted the frame that was all too common back in the day that climate change is a disputed matter and we should cover both sides: They embraced what I think is the proper journalistic view that there are facts here and there is objective truth,” Mann said. “That sent a very important message to legacy media at that time, and I think ICN can take some credit for having shifted the dynamic. Now other media outlets start at that same point.”
ICN took climate change seriously before many other outlets did, as even in the early 2000s climate change was a severely underreported topic. “I was the guy who in the late 90s, early 2000s got laughed out of my newsroom for saying that we needed to have a climate beat,” said Michael Kodas, a Senior Editor at ICN. “People thought, we’ve got a weather report and that’s good enough.”
This lack of coverage on climate change is exactly why the journalist David Sassoon started ICN, said Vernon Loeb, the Executive Editor at ICN. “Everybody covers climate now but I would argue that 90 percent of the story is still uncovered,” he added. “I think our presence has made the case to everybody that, if you care about public affairs, you’ve got to be covering climate.”
But how do you get people to care about climate change in the first place? Echoing the sentiments of journalists at PBS and WHYY at a PCSSM event on September 12, Kodas said “storytelling is the key,” adding, “You can get people to pay attention to the survivors of a wildfire or the drama of an evacuation, and, before they know it, they’re learning about how climate change is related to those events.”
In some ways this may mean science might have to take a backseat when covering climate change. “As much as the science is important, if we can’t link the story to people who are experiencing climate change on a daily basis, how is the science going to get out there?” said Victoria St. Martin, a reporter at ICN. “My focus has always been on the people because, at the end of the day, climate change is an environmental injustice because of the people that are affected.”
St. Martin told the audience about a story she wrote about the residents of Grays Ferry who live near one of the nation’s largest and oldest oil refineries based in Philadelphia. The refinery was closed in 2019 after an explosion sent toxic fumes into the air. While this closure brought much joy to Philadelphians, people living near the refinery still experience what psychologists call ecoanxiety, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder related to environmental disaster.
“This refinery has forever changed generations upon generations of Philadelphians,” said St. Martin. “Climate change isn’t just about the dread of the future,” she added. “It’s also about the dread of where you’re living right now and we have to write about this.”
Marianne Lavelle, another reporter for ICN, agreed with St. Martin that putting the people front and center is the best way to tell the story of climate change. “I went to Kentucky where they’ve had catastrophic flooding because of two things closely related to climate change: coal mining, which stripped the underground and weakened it, and deforestation,” she said. Unfortunately, despite the flooding, the U.S. Forest Service still permitted clear cutting in the area.
Her way into this story was through a logger who was fighting against this clear cutting. “You don’t think of him as a tree hugger, but he realizes the connection with climate change,” said Levelle. “People across the political spectrum living in these communities near the forests are aware of how the forest is their protection from climate change – it’s literally a carbon sink.”
Discussion about how we can take action in our communities continued into the Q&A. In response to a question about what small businesses can do to help with climate change, Kodas simply said, “just exist,” adding, “Supporting our local economy – instead of having Amazon bring us another box that’s associated with a bunch of emissions – in itself is good for the climate.” Or as the saying goes, ‘think global, act local.’
If someone were to ask you – what tools do we need to combat climate change? – a few things might first come to mind. We undoubtedly need laws aimed at reducing fossil fuel emissions, such as a tax on carbon. We also need innovative, scalable technologies for building more efficient electric cars and pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.
But in a democracy, there’s another tool that is at least as essential as these to overcoming climate change: effective solutions-driven storytelling. Promoting and studying this form of communication is central to the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media’s (PCSSM) mission. In conversation with filmmakers, journalists and leaders at Penn, PBS and WHYY, Philadelphia’s local PBS station, it was the topic of discussion at a recent panel event organized by the center held on September 12.
“As we continue to witness devastating climate disasters that now play out on a seemingly daily basis, the mission to communicate the science and its implications to the public and policymakers has become ever more essential,” said Dr. Michael Mann, PCSSM Director and Presidential Distinguished Professor at Penn. “Effective communication means connecting with not just people’s heads, but also their hearts. Compelling narratives and storytelling are essential in that effort. I can think of no organization that does a better job of that than PBS.”
Bill Gardner, Vice President of Multiplatform Programming and Head of Development at PBS, moderated the first of two panels. He posed one of his first questions to Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton, a biologist and the host of PBS’s Human Footprint series: “How do your roles as both a television host and scientist interact when telling stories?”
Campbell-Staton said that he’s gone into a lot of episodes thinking he was the expert, but after talking with “people who are intimately connected with the subject, he’ll often find himself admitting he “didn’t really know all that much.” The show then follows him on that journey of experiencing different cultures and places and takes the audience along for the ride.
No matter where you come from or your political background, “the thing that everyone loves universally is a story,” added Campbell-Staton. “It’s easy to dismiss an idea, but it’s a lot harder to dismiss a person,” he said, which means that “telling people’s stories” must be central to communicating the climate crisis.
Fay Yu, the Executive Producer of PBS’s America Outdoors series, agreed with Campbell-Staton that person-centered stories are key. America Outdoors isn’t explicitly about climate change, she said, it’s about people’s connection, either through work or play, to the outdoors. But “you can’t have a show about people’s experience with the outdoors without facing the climate problem every single episode,” she said. “These are just people telling honest stories with no agenda,” which “reflects back on the audience because they’ve probably had similar experiences in their own lives.”
Social media can also be an important tool for directly engaging with audiences, said Maribel Lopez, Head of PBS Digital Studios. “We use our audience to inform the types of programs we’re going to create. We can simply ask them on social media, and, once we start to see themes, we know we need to do an episode on that subject,” she said. “There’s nothing more powerful than that because we want to help tell their stories, especially for younger audiences.”
When it comes to climate storytelling, especially for the youth, members of our own community here in Philly are also taking part. That includes Dr. Bethany Wiggin, Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, who discussed her project, My Climate Story, with local schools. “In a moment of despair, I thought, ‘what can I do?’ I’m a literature professor and an environmentalist, so working with my students here at Penn I’ve grown a curriculum that helps people tell their own climate story,” she said. “We share those stories as a resource for teachers,” who then use it to help their students tell their own climate stories.
Susan Phillips, Senior Reporter and Editor for WHYY News Climate Desk, moderated the second panel, asking Mann, “how can we both tell effective solution-driven stories and also hold the powerful accountable?” Sometimes stories themselves can hold those in power to account, Mann responded, especially youth stories, citing a recent court case in Montana that resulted in the state now having to take concerted action to deal with climate change.
“Our youth have legal standing because their future is threatened,” he said. “What won the Montana case were the powerful stories that young folks told on the witness stand about how their lives were impacted by the climate crisis. It was so compelling that all of the fossil fuel money in all the world wasn’t able to compete with the moral authority of those children’s stories.” Now that precedent is set, he added, and youth in other states can take similar action.
What about journalists? Given their commitment to fair reporting, journalists can’t engage in advocacy, which raised the question during the event of how they can contribute to telling solutions-driven climate stories. Phillips and Sarah Glover, the Vice President of WHYY News and Civic Dialogue, discussed a good example.
“An education reporter teamed up with a climate reporter at WHYY and did a story about how kids in Philly are going to school in un-airconditioned buildings built in the 1930s, when no one would have thought that in September it would be 98 degrees,” said Philips. But WHYY did more than just report the facts – they also examined the costs to local businesses if they potentially stepped up and helped schools.
“We’re not saying to businesses – you need to do this. We’re saying – what would the result be if you did?” added Glover. “A news organization can’t be passive. We can’t just sit back and report the findings of today. We also have to trigger conversations about solutions.” This story is soon to be published.
In short, a central moral of the panel event was this – much like all other tools for fighting the climate crisis, solutions-driven storytelling is and must be a team effort. Journalists, professors, filmmakers and citizens themselves must all take part.
A question that crossed my mind boarding the plane at 6:45am on a Tuesday heading to Boise, Idaho (of all places). I was heading to a state known for potatoes and nature, and also the location of this year’s Society of Environmental Journalism (SEJ) Conference. Although this is published in May, I wrote this hardly a week after the conference is finished excited to share my experience and hopefully drum up some excitement in Philadelphia for what is sure to be an interesting experience at Penn in April 2024. While I don’t want to spoil all the fun by sharing every detail of my experience, I aim to share some highlights so that as my colleagues, students, and other interested parties read this may be more inclined to attend next year.
Straight from the horse’s mouth, “SEJ’s mission is to strengthen the quality, reach and viability of journalism that advances public understanding of environmental issues.” SEJ was founded in 1990 in Philadelphia, PA by editors and producers working for the Philadelphia Inquirer, National Geographic, Turner Broadcasting, and Minnesota Public Radio. This organization provides environmental journalists with a way to network with others in their field, acknowledge their colleagues’ work from fellow journalists through awards, fellowships, and conferences and webinars. This is certainly a society for journalists by journalists, but the very nature of journalists lends it to being a good place for other interested parties who might want to be involved.
Much like other conferences, there are panels, plenaries, talks, exhibitors (read: branded swag freebies), coffee throughout the day, catered meals, and opening/closing receptions. Having been to a variety of types of environmental conferences at various sizes, I thought I knew what to expect here. However, as I quickly learned, journalists and communicators operate differently even if their conference at a surface level seems similar to the annual meetings of Ecological Society of America or Geological Society of America. Journalists know how to get to the heart of an issue and ask the most striking questions – even when you are casually networking and discussing shared experience or interests. This was especially demonstrated during the all-day field trips (which covered a variety of environmental and energy issues in the Treasure Valley region) and the plenary talk with Department of Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland.
Let’s start with the all-day field trips. I signed up for “Tour 1. Sagebrush Country: Sunrise at the Lek”. What luck that seeing a sage grouse lek is a bucket list item for me. There are several species of grouse in the United States, and they all have unique mating rituals. I first learned about Greater Sage Grouse and their cousins (e.g., greater prairie chicken) as an undergraduate in a summer ornithology course. As someone who has been birding ever since, it was on my nature bucket list to see a sage grouse lek in action and this conference gave me that opportunity. It also allowed me a glimpse at how journalists work in the field.
The sage grouse lek field trip was in part organized by Ashley Ahearn of the NPR Grouse podcast from Boise State Public Radio News. Ashley’s love for the species certainly shines through on the podcast, but even at 4:00am when we gathered and then were making the trek to the lek, her enthusiasm for the species and their conservation issues is enough to wake you up (despite the sun not having come up yet and gentle rocking and movements from the field vehicle). We were greeted by some cows who occasionally acted as roosters mooing to greet the day and it was approximately 24°F when we arrived to the lek site at 6:30am. As you’ll see in the photos below, a lek is a relatively open area which leaves the male sage grouse especially vulnerable to predators such as the golden eagle. Luckily for the grouse, we saw no such activity while out at the lek. While at the lek, we learned more about Greater Sage Grouse biology and conservation issues from Dr. Jennifer Forbey (professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University) and Michelle Commons Kemner (wildlife staff biologist, Idaho Department of Fish and Game). We were fortunate to see many male sage grouses displaying at the lek.
Sunrise at the Sage Grouse lek (Credit: Heather L. Kostick)Sunrise at the Sage Grouse lek (Credit: Heather L. Kostick)
The trip to the lek was followed by a panel discussion of stakeholders including North American Grouse Partnership, Idaho Conservation League, Idaho Governor’s Office of Species Conservation, and a cattle ranch owner who work together for sage grouse conservation. Despite their varied backgrounds and beliefs, they all could agree that the main two issues facing sage grouse were invasive species and uncontrolled wildland fires (a common theme for conservation and land management issues in the western continental U.S.). From a scientist’s perspective, this field trip was an absolute delight and I used my observational skills to see how journalists approached the field trip. Between asking thoughtful and pointed questions throughout the day, taking photos, and copious notes, I dare say that journalists and scientists are not so different in the way we approach topics it’s just that our implementations for story telling are different.
Onto another highlight of the conference, keynote plenary with Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland followed by a panel discussion with Joan Mooney (Principal Deputy Assistant, DOI), Tracy Stone-Manning (Director, Bureau of Land Management), and Martha Williams (Director, US Fish and Wildlife Service) moderation from Debra Krol. Secretary Haaland highlighted some recent conservation and land management achievements, and announced some upcoming plans and projects that are sure to make stakeholders happy. These projects include $39 million from infrastructure part of the IRA towards fish passage projects in 22 states, $140 million for water projects (84 projects in 15 states) related to the Colorado River, workforce training for wildland fire fighting, and cleaning up legacy pollution.
However, there are just as many projects and plans that people are unhappy about to say the least. The first question out of the gate, once Secretary Haaland and the panel were done speaking, was about the Willow Project – an oil drilling project that could potentially release a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. While the IRA and DOI substantially reduced the scope of the Willow Project, it is still something that was approved much to the severe disappointment of environmental activists and the Native American people this project could impact.
The question asked Sec. Haaland to share her personal feelings on the approval of the Willow Project and how the DOI follows the science and law on the approval of the Willow Project. This was her first mention that as the DOI Secretary she does not have personal feelings, and went on to explain that this was a difficult and complicated decision for the administration but they are honoring leases that have been in effect (but not yet active) since the 1990s. When pressed on this point, she went on to add that this decision was remanded to the DOI by the courts due to the actions of a previous administration.
A follow up question not dissimilar to the first asked why hasn’t Biden spoken out on the Willow Project given how high profile the project is and the criticism that the President isn’t ending new drilling on federal lands and may allow more drilling. Sec. Haaland began her answer by mentioning that part of that is a question for President Biden as to whether he should speak out publicly on the Willow Project. She then went on to acknowledge that the Willow Project is high profile but by law they have to process permits and there is an obligation there to process them to allow drilling. However, Sec. Haaland then went on to say “we do the best we can. We need a transition to clean energy and wants people to talk about that” and then gave an example of the offshore wind projects, the transmission line in Arizona to getting energy to rural communities in the west. She went on to add “we’re not turning a faucet off and no one is using gas and oil”, and that she is glad there are activists speaking our as it’s their future “who are going to feel the neglect we’ve been inflicting on our earth for a long time”.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland speaking at the keynote plenary at SEJ 2023 (Credit: Heather L. Kostick).
Secretary Haaland was a politician and activist before she became Secretary of the Interior. It was nothing short of impressive to see Secretary Haaland navigate the pointed questions from journalists and aim to provide answers that while may not satisfy or reveal personal feelings from Sec. Haaland, but did aim to address the questions in part. In the tone of her voice and the careful choice of words belay her political experience. The dance between governmental leadership and probing journalists was on full display during the Q&A portion of this plenary.
Similar to the sage grouse display on the lek, governmental leadership is often forced to dance in an effort to appease stakeholders. While I think this is a dance we believe we’re familiar with, it is something else entirely to witness in person the way in which leadership can be constrained by the boundaries of their office and administration. However, despite watching this tango between Sec. Haaland and journalists, I think the following poignant statement she gave perfectly sums up her beliefs even if she did provide more than one “no comment” and does not “have personal feelings” as the secretary of the interior. In the closing portion of her keynote address, Secretary Haaland said something that I think all stakeholders interested in promoting better land management practices and conservation of ecosystems and species can agree on: “So many humans reap the benefits when they [humans] get out of the way and let nature lead”.
I can say with all honestly that SEJ was one of the more enjoyable and energizing conferences I’ve attended. Perhaps it’s because journalists and communicators are a little more naturally extroverted than my academic colleagues and peers, but I think at the heart of this is also the way in which conference topics were discussed and how stories were told. No doubt that high level science was being shared and discussed, but unlike at an academic conference where I have seen heated discussions break out over the best conservation methods of an endangered snail species, the spice of these discussions were in the avoidance of answers, the directness of inquiries, and the depth of the discussions. This conference coming to Penn is of course an opportunity for academics to share their work with journalists in an effort to encourage their science to be shared. Moreover, this conference is an opportunity for academics to understand how their science is communicated at large and connect with the lively and tenacious people behind those stories.
Is solar geoengineering a viable tool in the climate policy arsenal? The short answer is – we don’t know. In the face of such uncertainty, debate about the subject in the public sphere often becomes, well, heated. But at a panel event on April 19th, three experts – Michael Mann, Shuchi Talati and Michael Weisberg – debated the topic calmly and coolly. As Mann, the Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM), put it, “One of the great things about the environment we have here at Penn is that we can have different viewpoints and discuss them civilly and rationally.”
The event – jointly organized by the PCSSM, the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Perry World House – was moderated by Stacy-Ann Robinson, the Lightning Scholar at Perry World House and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Colby College. Robinson posed questions to the panelists that elucidated why we can’t even decide whether solar geoengineering should be used as a tool to fight climate change. Robinson posed her first question – What is solar geoengineering? – to Talati, a Visiting Scholar at Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and a scholar in residence with the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University.
Talati explained that there are two methods of solar geoengineering – stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB) – both of which aim to reflect solar radiation, or sunlight, back into the atmosphere to cool the planet. SAI mimics the effects of volcanic eruptions by injecting sulfur or other aerosol particles into the stratosphere. MCB involves spraying sea salt into low-lying rain clouds. While SAI would affect the entire planet’s temperature and precipitation patterns, MCB could be used regionally or globally.
But the physical, social and geopolitical risks involved with solar geoengineering remain largely uncertain, Talati added. We just don’t know how the climate and the people living on it will react to the deployment of the technology. This is because research on solar geoengineering has been limited to computer simulations and accidental experiments, such as the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991. After that eruption, the average global temperature dropped about 0.5°C for over a year. To significantly reduce uncertainty about the risks, especially the climatic ones, we’d have to conduct more controlled, real-world experiments.
Why haven’t we conducted these experiments? Because they might run into some of the risks that deployment of solar geoengineering itself entails. In this way, experimentation, especially on a larger scale, involves a bit of a catch-22. This was well articulated by Weisberg, Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UPenn and Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of Post-Graduate Programs at Perry World House: “We’re in a bind because part of the reason that people have been reluctant to do a lot of research about solar geoengineering is because of the uncertainty, but the reason there’s so much uncertainty is because there’s very little research that’s been done.”
Robinson also asked the panelists their viewpoints on what governance structures might be needed to both debate and regulate the technology. In response, Talati pointed out that most of the conversation about solar geoengineering has occurred in the Global North, despite the fact that climate change disproportionally affects the Global South. This needs to change, she argued. “Often when we talk about solar geoengineering, we focus on outcomes, but the critical question to me is how we make decisions and who gets to be involved,” she said.
Mann agreed. He also raised another reason why we need to put more effort into creating better governance on the issue: Rogue actors might deploy the technology without prior agreement from others. For this reason, we should set up international agreements sooner than later, he said. But Weisberg was more skeptical. He supported creating more governance when it came to debating solar geoengineering, but he argued it might be hard to avoid rogue action if things get really dire. This is partly why we need to do more real-world research on the subject, he said, so we have a better idea of what to expect in these kinds of cases.
At the end of the event, an audience member raised the worry that even considering the use of solar geoengineering could give polluters an excuse to continue with business-as-usual. This so-called ‘moral hazard’ argument against the technology might have been the issue where the panelists disagreed the most. Weisberg and Talati argued that, at present, this isn’t a worry, given the risks of the technology. The moral hazard argument might be more applicable to carbon recapture technology, which aims to suck carbon out of the air, than to solar geoengineering, they agreed. But Mann, who has experienced first-hand how low fossil fuel companies can stoop to avoid losing profits, was less optimistic.
Another audience member also crucially asked – Can we even stabilize warming at 1.5 or 2°C without the use of solar geoengineering? Weisberg explained that you could answer that question in two ways: from a scientific perspective and from a political perspective. Scientifically, we could, in theory, avoid 1.5 or 2°C without the use of solar geoengineering, he said “If we hit 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade and net zero by 2050, 1.5°C is possible according to the laws of physics and chemistry,” Weisberg explained.
It should come as no surprise that the answer to the question is more complicated from a political perspective. If all countries met their nationally determined contributions to reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement, which would be conditional on money flowing from the Global North to South, we’d be in the mid 2°C range, Weisberg explained. “If you add to that all the other pledges that everybody’s made, both private and public, you can squint and see around 2°C,” he said.
As a sober reminder, Talati pointed out that even if we hit net zero by 2050, we’re still going to experience increasing impacts of climate change, so the “political nature of solar geoengineering will likely shift” with those shifts in climate, she said. “A 1.5°C world is not a safe world,” Weisberg agreed, with Mann chiming in, “1.2°C, which is where we are now, is not a safe world either.” This is why other geoengineering technologies, such as carbon recapture, will have to be part of the climate policy arsenal. But as already noted, this technology also comes with risks.
“Philosophers like to talk about the distance of possible worlds to the current one,” Weisberg said. The world in which we never have to use solar geoengineering because mitigation succeeds “is a possible world, and it’s not so far away, but we’re not there yet.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island doesn’t shy away from debate. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me – he’s a former attorney after all. But I was surprised, nonetheless. Media coverage of politicians often involves sound bites of deflection – clips of frustrating, not-quite-answering-the-question responses. So, when I sat down to ask Sen. Whitehouse about his new book, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, experience told me he would deflect as well.
For the most part, Sen. Whitehouse – who is a member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, among others – did not give me those kinds of answers. I read his book, which he co-wrote with Jennifer Mueller, looking for holes and tensions in his argument, and (hopefully) my questions reflected that. It was, indeed, my intention to “grill” him, as he says at the end of the interview, and I’d say he withstood that grilling. Or as a philosopher would put it: He was a good interlocutor.
As a former journalist now researching journalistic practice through the lens of philosophy, since the interview I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s needed to cultivate an honest exchange between a politician and a journalist – a conversation of substance, not of sound bites – that also engages and informs readers. There are plenty of pieces in that puzzle, but here, I think, are two important ones.
First, time. Journalists need time to prepare thoughtful, well-researched questions – questions that bring out the nuance of the topics at hand. And politicians need time to get a grip on the topics they’re going to be grilled on. The interview itself must also be long enough to permit getting into the gray. And last, but not least, the reader needs to have the time to read the piece. I can say time was on my and Sen. Whitehouse’s sides. I hope it’s on yours as well.
Second, a commitment to being a good interlocuter – both the journalist and the politician. What does that mean? Examples usually speak louder than adjectives. Hopefully, the interview below provides a picture of what being a good interlocuter entails. But, in short, I think it involves listening to and respecting one’s debate partner, knowing what you’re talking about and having the freedom and ability to clearly articulate your ideas.
So, do I buy his argument? I’m not sure. Do I think dark money has flooded politics? That’s an obvious yes. Do I think the Right used dark money in an organized way to capture the Supreme Court? The verdict is still out on that one for me. As he admits in his book, Sen. Whitehouse relies mostly on circumstantial evidence. While this evidence may not win my full-blown belief, it does demand more digging. However, whether or not we buy his core argument, the solution remains the same – get dark money out of politics.
I interviewed Sen. Whitehouse after a panel event on December 9 associated with the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM). He was joined by Michael Mann, the PCSSM’s director; Kathleen Morrison, Chair of UPenn’s Department of Anthropology; and Joseph S. Francisco, a Professor of UPenn’s Departments of Earth and Environmental Science and of Chemistry.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
OpenSecrets reported that Democrats raised more dark money than Republicans in the 2020 election. You admit this in your book, while also mentioning a comment that a Republican senator made to you: “‘Democrats had better start raising a lot more dark money,’ if “we wanted to do anything about it.” Here’s the tension I see: Given the way that the game is played, you’re likely going to lose if you don’t raise dark money. But if you do raise dark money, then the public’s going to see Democrats as corrupted as well. Do you worry about that?
Imagine peewee football. One team goes out on the field, but they also bring baseball bats. When the ball is hiked, they whack the other team with the bats. That team would win really quickly. So, we have to bring baseball bats, too, in order to not be blown off the field.
The misdirection here is to focus on who’s using dark money. The real focus should be on who lets dark money onto the field – who requires it and protects it. The vote that we just had on my DISCLOSE Act makes it pretty clear – we got every single Democratic vote. We couldn’t get a single Republican to vote with us.
I think the failing of Democrats is not in using dark money ourselves, rather than letting ourselves be blown off the field. I think our failure is not understanding how important an issue this is both to our country and to the public and giving it the prominence that it deserves, so that we put real pressure on getting the baseball bats the hell off the Pee Wee football field.
The ACLU didn’t support the DISCLOSE Act. In a 2010 letter to the Senate, it claimed the bill “fails to preserve the anonymity of small donors, especially chilling the expression rights of those who support controversial causes.”
That’s false because the bill actually has a $10,000 floor. So if you think that somebody writing a $10,000 check is a small donor, well, we can have an argument about those terms. But I think what ordinary people think of as a small donor, we don’t even touch.
I don’t know. They go back to a case that’s important in ACLU legend: the NAACP membership case. In that case Alabama wanted the membership lists of the NAACP. At that time of state-sponsored violence against civil rights actors and against Black people in general, the NAACP sued and said, if we’ve got to give up all of our members, there’s a real danger that people are going to go to their doorstep with a can of gasoline or put a bomb in their basement, like they did to the churches.
The decision there – no, we’re not going to let that list out in this circumstance – was the correct, proper legal decision. But I think it’s not the same thing when a billionaire uses a front group to manipulate American politics to his advantage.
If the $10,000 isn’t the right break point, then maybe it should be $100,000, but at some point this business of anonymized manipulation of politics has to stop because it degrades citizens’ ability to understand what’s going on around them.
In chapter 19 of your book, you address principles conservatives say they stand for, precedent being one of them. In fact, you say respecting precedent is at the “heart of the court’s legitimacy.” But you write that the conservative Supreme Court has repeatedly disrespected precedent, the overturning of Roe v. Wade being one example.
But you simultaneously argue that there are some court rulings that we should overturn, and I’m guessing Citizens United would be among them.
Absolutely.
So, how do you walk the line between rooting out what you’d call problematic rulings, but also stick to precedent?
If you brought together a panel of really respected lawyers and legal academics, you could whittle down to the fingers on one hand the number of cases where it’s widely accepted that something seriously went wrong with the Supreme Court’s opinion. So, the number of precedents that would have to be overturned to make things right is actually very small.
If you look at some of the real stinkers, they have a common flaw, which is that they stand to a significant degree on false factual premises. Why is that important? That’s important because as a matter of law, fact finding is not a role that belongs in appellate courts at all. It belongs in district courts. So, when the Supreme Court goes about fact finding, it’s in an off-limits area.
When the facts that it finds are provably false, then, not only are they in the off-limits zone, but there’s no factual credibility to their finding. So, there’s a principled way to look at those decisions and say – this decision needs to be struck down because of the false factual premises upon which it is structured – without throwing out precedent as a general proposition.
What then is the false fact in Citizens United?
The false facts in Citizens United are that the unlimited political spending the decision unleashed was going to be independent of political campaigns and transparent to the public. Neither is true. You have to rely on groups like Campaign Legal Center to explain how independence isn’t there because it’s a little bit complicated.
But the transparency piece is blindingly obvious. All you have to do is look at the so-called outside spending that’s taking place in the political races that just concluded. There is demonstrably non-transparent spending happening in our elections. So, there’s no doubt that that premise of the decision was wrong, and wrong not just at the fringes – it’s billions of dollars. It’s a systematic flood of hidden special interest influence. You really can’t get much falser than that.
Speaking of transparency, Mike Mann asked you a question about the role of the media in bringing to light dark money actors. As you noted, the media are under intense financial pressure, especially local news, and, for that reason, may not be as able to uncover corruption. Given that transparency is so important to you, and given that a central role of journalism in democracy is making the system more transparent, would you support more public funding for journalism? Or are there other solutions?
One obvious solution we hope to pass into law this year allows small media outlets to gather together and gives them an exception from anti-trust laws. They can then say to Google, Facebook and other big tech platforms – if you want our content, you’ve got to pay us – in the same way that a musician can say to a radio station you can’t play my song without paying me. I think this is a way to restore the market balance, so that revenues go back to newspapers.
That would be an easy first step where you don’t have to face the danger of a government-controlled media, like in Putin’s Russia. There’s going to be a lot of anxiety about too much government funding going into media outlets. I think we steer clear of that problem by fixing that market dysfunction. I think there’s a real likelihood of getting that done.
You mention multiple times in your book that some practice by the Right isn’t normal. It’s how you put together the circumstantial evidence that makes up your argument. So, that made me think, if I can find one instance where you say something isn’t normal and it is, then that’s a hole in your argument.
Right, exactly.
I may have found one and I’d like to hear your response to it.
Go for it.
In chapter 12 of your book, you discuss so-called ‘plaintiffs of convenience.’ You write, “When you start with the case and then go looking for the client, that’s abnormal, a sign of an ulterior purpose. Lawyers for the conservative movement make no bones about the fact that they’re challenging a law or policy that they just don’t like.” But plaintiff finding is a regular practice of civil rights movement actors and a big part of test-case litigation in general. In short, it does seem like a normal practice.
There are two points to make on this. The first is that just because two different groups do something abnormal, it doesn’t make it normal. And second is it’s totally not normal for people to come into court to seek to lose a case. That’s just not how the system works. Trying to lose is a very telling signal about what the litigants expect from the Supreme Court. Then throw in that after the Janus case I think the plaintiff of convenience was now on the payroll of the litigation group.
So, when you add up – wanting to lose, plaintiffs of convenience, putting the plaintiff on the payroll, having front groups litigating who don’t disclose who their donors are so the costs are absorbed by someone who’s not even in the court room – that puts up enough red flags. The court should have been more cautious about taking cases that come up to it that way. Instead, it welcomed those cases and provided them with a fast lane.
I’m also concerned that the continual finger pointing of the Left at the Right, and vice versa, is at the root of polarization. When you write a book as a Democrat pointing the finger at the Right wing, do you worry about contributing to polarization?
I’d go back to the analogy I used during the panel: If you think of our Congressional sphere as a playground, there are areas of the playground in which bipartisanship is possible and areas in which it’s impossible. Having been in Congress a while, I’ve seen that boundary shift. It shifted very abruptly on climate change after Citizens United. It went from being very bipartisan with lots of bills kicking around to 100 percent partisan with no Republican participation in any serious climate measure. Like that [snaps fingers] you could see the shift.
When you see a shift that sudden, you can’t help but look at why, and there you see the fossil fuel industry. It happened exactly coterminous with the Citizens United decision, which I believe the fossil fuel industry saw coming. They were ready day one to go into Mitch McConnell’s office, to go into the Speaker of the House’s office, and to say – you will have unlimited money from us if you knock off this climate bullshit, and we will torture anyone on your side who crosses us on this, and you, as the leaders, need to enforce this as party policy.
So, in a situation like this – where they’re spending at least tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars, in every election – if you don’t go at that outside force that is putting pressure on colleagues, you’re never going to win the battle. I would actually make the argument that the more pressure I can put on the fossil fuel industry – the more I can call out its maligned behavior, the more I can make people suspicious of the industry and make it flinch back from its political influence mischief – the better the chance for bipartisanship.
In fact, Republicans might even be blinking at me that they’d like to help, like the guy in the prison camp who blinked in morse code ‘torture.’ Pretty heroic. There are Republicans who I have a good enough relationship with that I get the equivalent of that blinking.
There are countless conspiracy theories devoted to the idea of a deep state. Often people are told they’re crazy for believing them, but your book implies they might not be. For example, you write of “a system increasingly rigged with shadowy forces.” You do lay out evidence, but I worry that your book might support conspiratorial thinking generally, even if you’re right. How do you expose corruption, but avoid fostering conspiratorial thinking?
It’s hard to expose corruption without raising the notion that there is corruption. That’s sort of a self-proving thesis. The problem with the deep state argument is that it implies that the mechanism of government itself – the staff people, the career servants – are themselves the problem. But the problem is outside influence being brought to bear on those people. And you actually saw a lot of resistance from within the agencies to some of the weird Trump stuff because they knew it was wrong, if not illegal.
If you want to weaken government, and, therefore, make it more vulnerable to these special influences coming from outside forces, then having the American people think that those government staff folks – career civil servants and employees – are all a bunch of weird deep state aliens who are answering to some unknown master some place, that’s a really good narrative.
So, a lot of what your book is about is power: Corporate power. Supreme Court Power.
Totally. That’s the currency we’re dealing with here.
What’s the solution then? Do corporations have too much power? Does the Supreme Court have too much power?
I think the Supreme Court has way too little accountability. I think that the segment of corporate America that wants to play hard in politics has way too much power, and I think citizens have been dramatically deprived of power by being deprived of the ability to put the jerseys on the players and know who’s saying what on whose behalf.
There’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution – in the Philadelphia debates or in the Federalist Papers – that suggests any role whatsoever for non-human persons in American democracy. None. Not a whisper of it.
Corporations are not people?
Corporations are not people. They are not part of “We the People,” and they have no business in politics as the founders saw it. The role of corporations in our politics has been the creation of Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, beginning with Justice Lewis Powell and working their way through to the current court. One could easily envision a politics in which corporations had no role. One could very readily envision a politics in which, we’re going to give corporations a role, but they’re damn well going to tell us who they are instead of operating through some phony front group.
Is there anything you want to add?
No you’ve grilled me to the ground. I have nothing left.
Michael E. Mann is a presidential distinguished professor of earth and environmental science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the recently released book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet
In mid-October, a pair of climate activists from the group “Just Stop Oil” garnered substantial international media attention when they threw tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” they asked the shocked and visibly distraught crowd of onlookers.
Now I have devoted much of my time and effort over the past several decades to the cause of meaningful climate action. And as someone who also studies what makes for effective climate communication, I worried that events like this could harm the cause to which I (and so many) have devoted my life. I thought about the way the event would be framed by the media—the viral spread of a terrible photo of what certainly appears to be the defacement of an iconic and priceless piece of art, accompanied by damning headlines of wonton destruction.
My fears were realized. Characteristic of much of the media coverage, the New York Timesran an article headlined “Climate Protesters Throw Soup Over van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’” featuring the offending photo of the soup-splattered painting. Only if you made it to the end of the sixth paragraph did you learn that the painting was protected by a glass pane and not damaged.
The public outrage was palpable. The reliably progressive Dan Rather, a consistent advocate for urgent climate action, opined: “It’s destructive to protest the destruction of our planet by trying to destroy beautiful art.” Activists complained that Rather got it wrong—that the painting wasn’t actually destroyed. But the vast majority of the public, who like Rather were subject only to a photo and a headline, wouldn’t know that. They would only see a damning headline and photo. That could and should have been predicted by the architects of the protest. I weighed in on twitter: “If you’ve lost Dan, maybe rethink your strategy folks.”
Yet advocates of disruptive non-violent direct actions have argued that I and other critics were all wrong. We just didn’t get it! Our criticism was tantamount to attacking the youths themselves! Some compared the intervention to celebrated acts of civil protest by Gandhi and Martin Luther King (though conceding that a favorable view of the protest was contingent upon knowing that the painting wasn’t actually damaged).
But those actions at least made sense. Anti-war protests took place on college campuses among young people who were being drafted. Lunch counter sit-ins were protesting white-only policies. The painting protest, by contrast, seemed bizarre and pointless, with no obvious message about the climate crisis. Who was the target? Van Gogh? Oil paintings (get it)? From a communications standpoint, the protest seemed like an even bigger mess than the soup-splattered painting.
So was it? That’s what we attempted to assess using a recent survey of public opinion about this and other similar protests. We asked respondents three questions. First, does the public approve of using tactics like shutting down traffic or seemingly defacing rare art to raise attention to climate change? Second, do these tactics affect public beliefs surrounding human-driven climate change? And third, does the framing of these tactics (e.g. whether or not the art was actually damaged) influence that support?
The survey confirmed what many had suspected. The public, overall, just doesn’t like this sort of stuff. A plurality of respondents (46%) reported that these tactics decrease their support for efforts to address climate change. A whopping 27%, in fact, said they greatly decrease their support. Only 13% reported increased support.
Some might suspect that the negative response is driven by older, out-of-touch folks reacting negative to the actions of the “young whipper-snappers.” It is true that younger respondents (18-29) were less likely to decrease support (39%) than the oldest (65+) respondents (53%). But all age groups showed decreased support.
Some observers have expressed incredulity over the notion that a non-violent protest could lead someone who cared about the future of the planet to no longer do so. It’s just not rational, they point out. And they’re right, it’s not rational. Because people aren’t always rational. Presumably these actions, at least for some individuals, create an affective rather than cerebral response, generating negative associations with climate activists. And that negative association translates to decreased support for their cause.
Given the political polarization that exists today on climate, we might not be surprised that Republicans reported the largest (69%) decrease in support. It is noteworthy however that even Democrats were more likely to report a decrease (27%) than an increase (21%). And independents, who might be critical in establishing majority support for aggressive climate policies expressed strong disapproval, with 43% reporting a decrease in support and only 11% reporting an increase.
The vitriol we experienced when we posted our findings on social media was perhaps not surprising given the anger toward critics at the time of the protests. But even academic proponents of these protests criticized and dismissed our findings, insisting the poll questioning was somehow loaded or misleading. My colleague Kathleen Hall Jamieson who helped design the survey has commented on the poll design: “The question is a neutral description of actions that occurred and were reported in news. A rationale for the actions is included in the question.”
The reader can judge for themselves. We first used a baseline question to assess respondents’ views of the climate crisis, asking whether or not they agreed with the statement: “Human use of fossil fuels creates effects that endanger public health.” More than 62% of the respondents answered in the affirmative, indicating that the group was predisposed, overall, to be concerned about fossil fuel burning and climate change.
They were then asked: “To raise awareness of the need to address climate change, some advocates have engaged in disruptive non-violent actions including shutting down morning commuter traffic and pretending to damage pieces of art. Do such actions decrease your support for efforts to address climate change, increase your support for efforts to address climate change or not affect your support one way or another?”
By describing protesters as “pretending” to damage art, we granted them the benefit of the doubt; we informed respondents, a priori, that the art wasn’t actually damaged. If anything, that should have primed an overly favorable response.
Critics of our study quickly brandished another recent (online) poll in the UK that purports a 66% level of support for nonviolent protests. They insisted it contradicts our findings. But that poll asked “Would you support taking non-violent direct action to protect the UK’s nature?” It didn’t even describe the disruptive acts in question, which means respondents weren’t confronted with the negative imagery of those acts. Furthermore, respondents were primed to give a positive response by being somehow promised that these protests would “protect the UK’s nature.” Were that environmental protection was that simple!
It takes substantial motivated reasoning to accept the findings of the UK survey and reject the findings of ours. And unfortunately, just as with climate change denial, there seems to be way too much motivated reasoning on the part of proponents when it comes to the topic of disruptive non-violent climate protests.
And what about the issue of whether or not the art was damaged. Did it matter to people? To investigate if that mattered to respondents, we split our poll sample. Half the sample was instead asked a slightly different version of the question, where “pretending to damage pieces of art” was changed to “damaging pieces of art.” The results were virtually identical, suggesting—somewhat surprisingly—that knowing that the art wasn’t actually damaged was not actually a mitigating factor with respect to public opinion. It didn’t matter. Presumably, it was the “thought” rather than the “act” that truly counted.
So, do our results suggest that there is no role for non-violent protest by climate advocates and activists? No. There are bad actors and villains in the climate space: Fossil fuel companies engaged in greenwashing campaigns, plutocrats who fund dark-money climate denial and delay campaigns, makers of gas-guzzling vehicles, the list goes on. A public opinion survey earlier this year by researchers at Yale and George Mason University finds that direct actions that target the bad actors (e.g. billionaires who fly fossil fuel-guzzling private jets) garner substantial support.
But actions that subject ordinary commuters to delays when they’re just trying to get to work in the morning, or subject art gallery visitors to the unpleasant, wanton apparent destruction of iconic artwork, are simply choosing the wrong targets. They are alienating potential allies in the climate battle. And protests that simply make no sense at all when reduced to a photo and a headline—which is what the vast majority of the public will see—are potential public relations disasters.
The youth protesters have their heart in the right place. But the organizations behind these protests need to do right by them by being smart about the design of any public interventions. That means, among other things, choosing sensible actions and appropriate targets. If we are to win the battle against polluters and their enablers, we will need public opinion on our side not theirs.
Note: The survey was designed in consultation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founding director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and founder of factcheck.org. It was as part of a larger project examining public opinion on climate change and human health. The polling was conducted by SSRS, the same firm that conducted the late-breaking CNN polls that contradicted the “red wave” wrongly predicted by many other pollsters in the recent midterms. Analysis of the results was conducted by Ken Winneg, APPC’s Managing Director of Survey Research and APPC Research Analyst, Shawn Patterson Jr. (details can be found online).
In mid-October, a pair of climate activists from the group “Just Stop Oil” garnered substantial international media attention when they threw tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” they asked the crowd.In light of these non-violent, disruptive protests the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) investigated the impact these actions have on public perceptions of climate change.
Over two surveys, we attempt to answer three questions. First, does the public approve of using tactics like shutting down traffic or gluing oneself to Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earing to raise attention to climate change? Second, do these tactics affect public beliefs surrounding human-driven climate change? And third, do the framing of these tactics influence that support?
Overall, we find that the public disapproves of non-violent, disruptive climate protests. A plurality of respondents (46%) report that these tactics decrease their support for efforts to address climate change. Only 13% report increasing support. There are important sub-group differences in this measure of support – White respondents and Republicans were both more likely to report that these efforts decrease their support compared with Black or Hispanic and Democratic respondents.
Second, through a survey experiment, we find that priming these protest efforts does not affect respondents’ beliefs toward climate change. Specifically, we find that asking about non-violent, disruptive protests before asking whether respondents believe human use of fossil fuels creates effects that endanger public health does not influence respondents’ answers.
And finally, we find that these effects are not predicated on the framing of the tactics deployed. We find no difference in support for these efforts when we vary whether respondents are asked about “damaging pieces of art” or “pretending to damage pieces of art.”
These results shed some light on the potential effectiveness of efforts to raise awareness and support for climate activism.
Question 1 – Does the Public Support for Non-Violent, Disruptive Protest?
CLI1. To raise awareness of the need to address climate change, some advocates have engaged in disruptive non-violent actions including shutting down morning commuter traffic and damaging pieces of art. Do such actions (decrease) your support for efforts to address climate change, (increase) your support for efforts to address climate change or not affect your support one way or another?
[IF INCREASE OR DECREASE]:
CLI2. Do they (only slightly [decrease/increase]), somewhat [decrease/increase] or (greatly [decrease/increase]) your support for efforts to address climate change?
Figure 1 presents the distribution of combined responses to the questions above. A plurality of respondents (46%) say that disruptive non-violent actions decrease their support for efforts to address climate change. Nearly as many (40%) say that these do not affect their support one way or another, while only 13% say that these actions increase their support.
Figure 1
Figures 2 and 3 highlight significant demographic differences in support for these tactics. 69% of Republicans report that these non-violent, disruptive protests decrease their support for climate action, compared to only 27% among Democrats. It is noteworthy however that even Democrats are more likely to report a decrease (27%) than an increase (21%) in support. Moreover, independents, who might be critical in establishing majority support for aggressive climate policies express strong disapproval of the tactics, with 43% reporting a decrease in support and only 11% reporting an increase.
White respondents and men are also significantly more likely to report a decrease in support, compared to Black, Hispanic, or Other Race respondents and Women, respectively.
Figure 2
In comparison, Democrats are significantly more likely to report that these tactics increase their support for efforts to address climate change in comparison to Republicans or Independents. Similarly, Black and Hispanic respondents are more likely to report increased support than white respondents. However, in contrast with Figure 2, there is no significant difference between men and women in their likelihood to report increasing support from these non-violent, disruptive protests.
Figure 3
While a plurality of the population appears opposed to such tactics (46%), the public could also be viewed as indifferent. These actions only slightly decrease (6%), slightly increase (2%), or have no effect (40%) on individual’s support for efforts to address climate change for 48% of respondents.
Question 2 – Do Non-violent, Disruptive Protests Affect Views on Climate Change?
CLI0. Please indicate if you believe the statement below is true, false, or if you aren’t sure.
Human use of fossil fuels creates effects that endanger public health
To address whether these tactics effect people’s perceptions of climate change, we embedded an experiment in the survey by randomly asking the above question to half of the respondents before asking about disruptive protests, with the other half being asked afterwards. This allows us to test the potential priming impact of these actions on support for climate action.
Table 1
To test this systematically, Table 1 presents the estimated effect of treatment (receiving the question about disruptive protests before asking the above question) on respondents’ beliefs that human use of fossil fuels creates public health dangers. The treatment indicator is a binary variable (treated or untreated) and the outcome is a five-point scale ranging from Definitely false (0) to Definitely true (1), with respondents reporting to be “Not sure” placed at the mid-point (.5). We control for pre-treatment covariates (age, college education, gender, party identification, and race) to account for any potential imbalance that occurred in the randomization.
As the first model coefficient demonstrates, while the treated group was very slightly less likely to agree with the above statement, the differences were not statistically significant. These results suggest that hearing about these protest efforts did not affect respondent’s views on the public health dangers of fossil fuels.
Question 3 – Does the Framing of Protest Tactics Affect the Levels of Support?
ORIGINALCLI1. To raise awareness of the need to address climate change, some advocates have engaged in disruptive non-violent actions including shutting down morning commuter traffic and damaging pieces of art. Do such actions decrease your support for efforts to address climate change, increase your support for efforts to address climate change or not affect your support one way or another? [Emphasis Added]
NEWCLI1. To raise awareness of the need to address climate change, some advocates have engaged in disruptive non-violent actions including shutting down morning commuter traffic and pretending to damage pieces of art. Do such actions decrease your support for efforts to address climate change, increase your support for efforts to address climate change or not affect your support one way or another? [Emphasis Added]
The final question we address in these surveys is whether the framing of tactics deployed by these activists affects public support of these efforts. For example, The New York Times’ ran an article titled “Climate Activists Throw Mashed Potatoes on Monet Painting,” further describing it in the subtitle as “the latest attack on widely admired art.” However, it is not until the fifth paragraph that the article notes that “the food did not cause any damage to the piece.” This raises the question, does the public differentiate between “damaging pieces of art” and “pretending to damage pieces of art” in their views of these non-violent, disruptive protests?
To test this question, we conducted a second survey where respondents randomly received one of the two above questions. Was the public responding to the particularities of the tactics, we would expect to see greater support (or less opposition) in the “pretending” condition. As we can see from the distribution of responses in Figure 3, there does not appear to be such an effect. Respondents provided similar distributions of responses regardless of whether the actions were presented as “damaging” or “pretending to damage” pieces of art.
Figure 4
Conclusion
Overall, the public expresses general disapproval of non-violent, disruptive protests to raise attention to the dangers of climate change. A plurality (46%) report that such efforts decrease their support for their cause.
However, these efforts have minimal effects on people’s perceptions of the dangers of climate change. Priming these efforts had no effect on people’s belief that human use of fossil fuels creates effects that endanger public health. Moreover, the framing of the actions appears to also have a small impact – respondents did not differentiate “damaging” and “pretending to damage” pieces of art in their appraisal of such actions.
Surveys
Both studies were conducted by SSRS on its Opinion Panel Omnibus platform. The SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus is a national, twice-per-month, probability-based survey. All SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus data are weighted to represent the target population of U.S. adults ages 18 or older.
Data collection for the first study was conducted from October 21-24, 2022 among a sample of 1031 respondents. The survey was conducted via web (n=1001) and telephone (n=30) and administered in English (n=1006) and Spanish (n=25). The margin of error for total respondents is +/-3.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Data collection for the second study was conducted from November 4-7, 2022 among a sample of 1025 respondents. The survey was conducted via web (n=995) and telephone (n=30) and administered in English (n=1000) and Spanish (n=25). The margin of error for total respondents is +/-3.7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Analyses of the results were conducted by Ken Winneg, APPC’s Managing Director of Survey Research and APPC Research Analyst, Shawn Patterson Jr., Ph.D.
Like many others during the start of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, I joined TikTok after a few months of hemming and hawing. I thought it was a children’s or teen’s app where they did dances or dumb trends (re: tide pod challenge), but not necessarily something to be taken seriously. As the algorithm got to know my interests, I saw videos on cats, recipes, canning, Tolkien, Game of Thrones, anti-racism, international issues, and a myriad of other topics. Of course, as an ecologist and someone who cares about scicomm, I also ended up on Biology and Ecology Tiktok where I saw folks sharing everything from “stop baiting deer with corn because it’s spreading chronic wasting disease (CWD)” to “here’s what your microbio prof thinks about XYZ”. Eventually this evolved into slightly more niche topics like environmentalism, ecology, and climate change. It has been the climate change piece of the videos in my algorithm that has captured my attention the most.
As with anything on the internet of a specific topic, in this case climate change, there are a ton of videos that range from cutesy, 10-ways-to-reduce-carbonfootprint to sharing active protests and ways to stay safe during protests. Something that I’ve found that I believe might be unique to TikTok is organizing against fossil fuel companies in ways that they don’t know how to deal with. I have seen various creators gather intel and share information on how to essentially bully these companies into changing policies or effectively stopping pipeline construction through political action and protest. The majority of these “clock app” climate activists also happen to be indigenous people.
Birdie Sam, otherwise known as @Showme_Yourmask on TikTok, is a T’lingit two-spirit creator who focuses on educating to arm regular people with knowledge and activism tactics in order to “bully the rich” in an effort to combat the hold the fossil fuel industries have on the world. Birdie’s first viral videos were on learning about abuse tactics and how abusers weaponize the victim’s reactions against them. Something clicked and Birdie realized that oil companies were using the same abusive tactics to trigger public reactions and use that to their benefits.
Birdie Sam discussing fossil fuel divestment and politics on TikTok.
“Somehow abusive people make their way to positions of power within those [oil] companies, and it’s world-wide.” – Birdie Sam
Realizing what abusive tactics these companies and their executives were doing, Birdie knew it could be used to their advantage to fight against them. @ShowMe_YourMask is often targeted for “violating community guidelines” for telling the truth about the damage oil companies and their executives are doing to the environment. One particularly formidable opponent for Birdie has been Enbridge, North America’s largest natural gas utility, and Birdie makes sure that people know exactly how Enbridge’s actions impact the environment and the communities they operate in. In particular, Birdie and their mutuals on TikTok were directly responsible for bringing the Stop Line 3 protest news coverage to the forefront of the country’s mind when local police officers in Minnesota started to get rough with protestors (but only after Birdie bullied local news stations into covering the protests which featured many teenaged protestors
“Every time I got a community guidelines violation for telling the truth [that] is what triggered the “bully oil executives” because the truth is bullying them somehow” – Birdie Sam
Birdie Sam sharing one of her signature TikTok videos on how to “bully oil executives”.
As flautist and TikTok sensation Lizzo says in her music: truth hurts; and it clearly applies to the work that Birdie has been doing and encouraging her followers to do. Birdie’s followers seem to be a diverse mix of Gen Z, LGBTQ+ folks, indigenous people, and interestingly oil workers. Birdie ended up on the side of TikTok where oil workers reside, and found that through interacting with them that oil workers have a lot of the similar health and economic issues that coal miners do. Many oil workers want to leave the industry but find it financially impossible to do – they’re trapped by the company. Birdie started to share resources on renewable energy jobs and engaging with the community in order to help.
Birdie’s particular brand of activism is not alone on TikTok and can be seen in other accounts. Climate Change is not the only activism you’ll see on the app either – activists involved with the 2022 Iranian Revolution, Russians protesting against their own government for the war in Ukraine, and Indigenous people and survivors of Residential Schools of the U.S. calling for support and action on the upcoming Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) review by the Supreme Court in mid-November.
Although TikTok has grown into more than just a trendy teen app, it’s not the only social media app activists use. Fossil Free Penn is a student-led activist group on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus and they are well-known for not just their traditional protest tactics (e.g., sit ins, encampments), but they also are known to utilize social media, particularly Instagram and Twitter, to spread the word about their activism and share their message and goals to the public. While their TikTok account is not very active, a quick search on the app will lead you to coverage of their protests. They primarily use Instagram and Twitter to communicate their mission, events, information sessions, and updates to their supporters. Fossil Free Penn is currently focusing on three overarching goals from Penn:
Commit $5-10 million and/or land to the purchase and preservation of the People’s Townhomes.
Divest from fossil fuels.
Pay PILOTS.
Fossil Free Penn points out that Penn is only one of two ivy league universities who have not divested from fossil fuels, and is the only school of the great eight to not pay PILOTS. The student activists that make up Fossil Free Penn have been actively protesting and aiming, as they see it, to hold Penn accountable since 2014. To gain more of their perspective, I spoke to two Penn undergraduates involved with Fossil Free Penn: junior Katie Francis and freshman Eliana Atienza. We discussed how the Fossil Free Penn movement benefits from social media and the community of these individuals who truly believe Penn can be better and a leader in climate and community justice.
Both Katie and Eliana became involved with Fossil Free Penn thanks to their friends. For Katie it was a friend inviting her to the encampment in Spring 2022 that was her initial introduction to the movement. Similarly, Eliana was invited to a Fossil Free Penn training the same night she was invited to become involved with the recent encampment that ended on October 22. Both students feel that social media is an important resource for the movement in sharing news and ways to get involved, but it is the in-person actions that help the movement gain traction, and it’s the community of people that allow this movement to keep its momentum.
“Number one priority is people’s safety [when it comes to social media]. [Fossil Free Penn] hasn’t used social media as a tactic to get attention from Penn. The actions themselves are what puts pressure on Penn and that’s what gets the media coverage… which puts a lot of pressure on Penn.” – Katie Francis
“Social media can be very empowering and finding a community online that believes in what you are investing your time and effort and energy into is inspiring beyond words. But apps like sidechat [show] it can get really disheartening… there are two very contrasting parts to what it [social media] can do and what it has been doing.” – Eliana Atienza
Fossil Free Penn focuses its energy on not letting the backlash show on social media, but it’s clear that it exists. In addition to the potential administrative discipline students face for getting involved, the online vitriol and reactions from non-actors at protests remain a reality for these student protestors. Whether you search Fossil Free Penn on Instagram, Twitter, or Tiktok, you will see a mix of support and opposition for the movement. There’s a striking video on TikTok of the Homecoming football protest where a Yale parent is ripping a banner away from Fossil Free Penn protestors despite being asked by security to stop. In the same beat, you can see videos on others sharing the work the protestors are doing and why one might want to support their movement. Penn alumni from a variety of class years have also reached out to Fossil Free Penn to make sure they know they have support from past Quakers.
A Yale fan can be seen getting into a tug-of-war with Fossil Free Penn protestors at the recent Penn Homecoming football game.
Despite the heated debate that Fossil Free Penn can spark both in-person and online, one thing that must be noted is the unrelenting optimism of these student protestors. Although Katie and Eliana don’t speak for all students involved with Fossil Free Penn, but it is clear that this community has a common belief: that Penn can do better, and they believe that Penn can really be a leader in the community and beyond.
“We have hope that Penn can be a force for good and we’re working to do that. I would encourage everyone else to find that hope that the world can get better and to get involved in any capacity.” – Katie Francis
“People ask ‘why do you protest Penn, you’re a student?’ People who protest don’t do it out of hate for the institution, it’s out of a motivation to see Penn properly embody their goals. Penn can be a leader in climate justice and community justice. They have the brains and the funds to do so muich good for the community… they can set the precedent for so much positive change.” – Eliana Atienza
One thing is clear, social media is a key component of communication and education in activism. Instagram is an app that started out as a photo sharing app and after 13 years has evolved into more with users being able to post videos, reels, go on live video streaming, and shop. Instagram’s format allows users to share posts and information efficiently and makes it easy for activists to share meeting information, recruit volunteers, and raise awareness – as Fossil Free Penn has been able to do. TikTok may be one of the younger social media apps at six years old; and it may be contributing to our ever-shortening attention spans, but with over 1 billion active users its power cannot be denied. What started as a dancing and trend app for Gen-Z has grown into something more. With the help of the isolation brought on by the pandemic which forced TikTok to welcome millions of new users on the app, TikTok seems to be dominating in the arena of a place for the everyperson to share their message and educate the masses. Whether it’s bullying oil executives or sharing real-time protests to the app, it looks like TikTok is a force to be reckoned with for science communication and people should pay attention.